• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, June 26, 2019

Google has already begun to prepare marketers for the holidays, even though the biggest shopping days of the year — Black Friday and Cyber Monday — may be more than four months away.

On Wednesday the company introduced several features. One automatically adjusts the ad bid based on the season. Google calls it “seasonality adjustments.”

Marketers that run a promotion for grills as U.S. consumers prepare for July 4 cookouts can use historic seasonal adjustments to let Smart Bidding know what to expect in terms of conversion rate increases, for example. The bids are based on past promotions, as well as increased predictions in conversion rates during the sale.

Google also plans to launch new features for Local campaigns, such as the ability to drive and optimize calls to business locations.

The tool, which launches in the next few weeks, will highlight what makes marketers' businesses unique across Google Search, Maps, YouTube and other Google-owned sites.

Starting today, marketers can create location groups to make it easier to promote a subset of their business and location. Brands selling specific back-to-school product bundles at certain locations, for example, can use location groups to tailor budgets and messaging to communicate this type of offer.

Google also began rolling out asset reporting to give marketers better insight into creative performance. The goal is to give marketers insight into the best messaging and assets for specific campaigns to improve creatives. 

The Latin American department store Sanborns, an earlier adopter of Local campaigns, found that the tool increased store visits by 10 times during a recent campaign for Father’s Day in Mexico.

In addition to launching new features in Local campaigns, Google will make it easier for retailers to highlight in-store promotions for specific products through Shopping ads by connecting the two.

As of today, retailers have connected more than 2 billion offers to physical store locations globally using local inventory ads.

“Callout in-store offers like ‘20% off’ or ‘buy one get one free’ for inventory you have in stock and drive more nearby deal-hunters to your physical locations,” wrote Kishore Kanakamedala, director of product management at Google, in a blog post.

The feature will initially roll out in the U.S. and Australia, with more countries joining soon.